Chess as a career

And what would you know about it?

Seriously tho, with some serious help, and coaching will I ever reach 2000?

I believe anyone can get to 2000+ with enough motivation and time.

Again, yes, but many other people also do not make a living. You cannot expect 20% of the population to become a chess coach (probably even 0.2% would be waaaay too much).

I come back to my stupid analogy : until someone explains me the difference between "work hard to be a GM" and "meditate hard until you discover teleportation", I will hold them of same value. (apart from the fact that one suggestion is much likely to be seriously asserted in the internet forums without all the others start laughing)

Less likely to happen you think ? Who did become a GM while being unknown in chess at the age of 30 ? None. And I guess more people tried that than meditating as a career.

The whole "anyways we will die someday" argument will not make you work hard to become a GM if you think it through, it will make you sniff drugs and rob banks for easy money. (but hey, if you're happy...)

And eventually, yes, some (not many) geniuses were precisely going against my advice. The question is whether you are ready to abandon a safe bet for a normal life to have a 0.000001% chance to be the next Mozart or Carlsen, which is not going to make you a thousand times happier. My point is not that it's a physical impossibility and that trying it must result in a failure : it is that it's so unlikely and the result no so rewarding.

If you chose to try being a genius instead of a safer way, the same logic should make you go buy a lottery ticket. With the difference that the cost of a lottery ticket in case of failure is lower than unemployment after ten years of hard study, the probability of success is roughly the same, and the result of success is a life without having to work which is not the case if you are a GM.

Read my post again, slowly. It does assume that the OP would rather be a chess grandmaster rather than have a dull career.

As for the fact that revolutions kill the safe bets, well, yes. And if a dinosaur-killing meteorite falls on the Earth, I will regret having spent my youth studying. And if idiot aliens that have no weaponry come on Earth and try to kill all humans with bare hands, and they land on my house, and I'm the only casualty before the army kills them all, as well.

The question is not what could be. The question is the probabilities and expected values of outcomes.

a revolution is not unlikely, especially in modern times, we lived on the exploitation of the rest of the world. Prices rises, new competitors, people get jobless. Its not that unlikely that uproars will hit western countries.

Have you had a look how fast the wages rised in asian countries??

Its not like the cake gets bigger every day, its still the same cake we have to share more. Its not that unlikely that we have a very unstable future.

just look at japan, was once the dominant player in asia, now china rises and has much business, the world doesnt stand still. The time are gone were all businessman dreamed of western living, some people rich already argue how good china is. What china has spend on infrastructure like new roads and stuff, they are constantly saying the money is going somewere else, just look at the infrastructure in the west, just look at the black outs in new york.

In this world nothing is a safe bet....

I am 38, If I study and practise long enough will I become a astronaut ? I always toot that is much better way to spend working day. Will I, will ?!

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,  that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.

It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.

A man is relieved and happy when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place 

the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and conded themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and

inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy

against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock

company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. 

(source:  Self Reliance by Emerson)

very well spoken billyblatt

1- "an uproar is not that unlikely in Western countries".

In France, even the communist parties do not believe in or preach for a revolution anymore. And the unemployment reached the pre-WW2 records.

Some regions are unstable, and will fight for oil/water. But not the Western countries yet.

2-"It's not like the cake is getting bigger every day"

What is the cake ?

I suspect this hides a huge economic flaw.

For example, if "the cake" = "the money in the world", the answer is that 1-money has not a fixed utility value (you can buy more or less goods with the same amount of money depending on inflation), and 2-there is not a fixed amount of money in the world.

If "the cake" = "the goods in the world", then you could as well say no computer exist, as there were none in 1900.

My point was rather that there is hope and not that you should bet your life on it. Play chess as a hobby and don't give up usual work. You could try coaching sometimes to earn some small money and if things would start to look really well you could try having chess as a career. Even if that opportunity will never happen it doesn't matter if you had fun trying.

Sorry, that is actually from Self Reliance by Emerson

+1

Well the cake is, we lived from nations doing work for less. now they demand more, so we get less. No monetary system will change or disguise the fact. There is no reason to believe that advancement in computerization and automatisation of work procedures will make up for it. Let alone that the land that is finite and the ever rising number of draughts. The chinese and other countries change their diet to more and more meat. More than 2 billion people could only afford vegetables mostly, now they can afford meat. Do you know how much corn you need to grow an animal??? Do you have any idea what effect that will have on food prices???

Oh yes ? Apart the history of the past 4000 years you mean ?

You do realize that the food production now is without any common measure with what it was say 50 years ago ? Which itself is enormous compared to 50 years before ? etc.

And again, the food prices are not an important matter, because money has no intrisic value. What matters is the proportion of an average salary it takes to feed one. And I don't know for Japan, but in Europe that proportion kept decreasing even after WW2 despite the dramatic population increase (baby boom) and the various oil crises.

I am not saying all is going to be well for everyone. The Western standard of living will remain the same (or increase if technological progress allows it) at the cost of the exploitation of other countries - if not China, Thailand for instance. And even within them, it is possible that the average will mask great inequalities. Yes, "someday" it will stop, but if "someday" happens after my grand-grand-grand children die, I don't care much.

OK, let's try to stop the thread hijacking now.

So all trolling or off topic aside, have we come up with a conclusion on whether it's feasible to live with chess (i.e. coaching)?

Let's say you're a FM.

Don't waste your life

why is it a waste of time? the way is the goal. Would be stupid not pursue it, why is it a waste of time?? nothing you do is a waste of time unless you enjoy it.

could also become buddhist monk